hometown - Link to source

It's been a week and a half since @marieverdeil and I started our EXTRA residency around permacomputing at @imal, so I thought it would be a good time to share some of the things we have been researching so far ✨

We are looking at batteries as means of energy storage, for now from all angles - we looked into their chemical compositions, how they're produced, recycled, reused, as well as the discourse around batteries as *the* solution to a sustainable future.

By the end of our one-month residency we will talk about our process and do a two-day workshop titled 'And what if we cooked with batteries?' at @imal's event The Cookery (save the date, it's 18-21 of September)

Below are two images from the first couple of days of the residency!

Grey desk with a laptop and external monitor showing a youtube video about how to DIY a battery. On the table are containers with various alcaline batteries and some notes on sheets of white paper.
White female with brown hair measuring the size of a lithium-ion battery with a metal measuring tool and looking intently at the battery. She has a laptop in front of her.
@marie verdeil @iMAL Brussels (25 years!)
in reply to dasha ilina

pleroma - Link to source

feld

The interesting thing that "Charlie" enables is for people to be able to install that oven/range to replace gas where they wouldn't normally have the required electrical hookup, whether just a wiring issue or maybe their mains panel is too small to add another 30A and be allowed by code anyway

So if you could build a battery+inverter combo device that let you do this for a normal oven/range that would be pretty awesome

in reply to Pitermach

mastodon - Link to source

Tissman

@pitermach The main listing is here, but the actual files are hosted on archive.org, so download speeds aren't ideal:
spectrumarchive.org/recordings…

Recordings

VCR DX The following spectrum recordings were originally made on HiFi Video Cassette Recorders in the late 1980s and early 1990s by “DXers”–radio enthusiasts who enjoy receiving a…
the radio spectrum archive
@Pitermach

mastodon - Link to source

#AndroidAppRain at apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid today with 16 updated and 1 added apps:

* Fluffy: a lightweight file manager for phones, tablets, and Android TV 🛡️

RB status: 697 apps (53.6%)

3 #Magisk modules were updated at apt.izzysoft.de/magisk

Enjoy your #free #Android #apps with the #IzzyOnDroid repo :awesome:


IzzyOnDroid F-Droid Repository

This is a repository of apps to be used with your F-Droid client. Applications in this repository are official binaries built by the original application developers, taken from their resp. repositories (mostly Github, GitLab, Codeberg).
IzzyOnDroid App Repo
#android #free #apps #AndroidAppRain #magisk #izzyondroid

gotosocial - Link to source
Does anyone know an #Accessible #app for #fedi that supports go to social and works on iPhone? Mona excluded. Can't afford and is too complicated for me. #Feditext and #MetaText have no way to hide cws with voiceover rotor actions, so that's a dealbreaker. Looking for something, as #Toot! is not updated, and is eating up too much battery. Thank you in advance.
#accessible #app #fedi #metatext #toot #feditext

André Polykanine reshared this.

in reply to Paweł Masarczyk

gotosocial - Link to source

Winter blue tardis

There is an unlock premium, but the app itself does not have push notifications hera, I got it from appstore. Price for life time is almost 70 BGN, other options are for a subscription, but fedi is free, one-time purchases are okay, but I don't think we should be paying exorbitant prices for apps to use fedi. I know there's the web, but try using enafore on a phone. It's not designed for phones.
in reply to Winter blue tardis

gotosocial - Link to source

Winter blue tardis

You also can't say premium unlocks push notifications, when push notifications to phone aren't even implemented, there isn't even a permission in settings to ask the phone if it's okay to send it notifications. Like, that's a bit of a lie, either that, or it's still in the works, which is fine, but then it shouldn't be listed as a premium feature in my opinion.
in reply to Paweł Masarczyk

mastodon - Link to source

Łukasz Rutkowski

If you go to App Store page, for each app there is Information section. One of items will be in app purchases. When you tap on it it expands listing available purchases and prices. Looks like that section is barely accessible but at least you can access it.

My idea for pricing is base price for monthly, 10 times that for yearly and 3 times that for lifetime. I didn’t change it since beginning.

in reply to Łukasz Rutkowski

gotosocial - Link to source

Winter blue tardis

I complained a bit about the price because we'll be changing currency next year, so it'll be interesting. Not looking forward to it. But also because I wanted to send the app as a gift to someone to try it out. Turns out, I cannot if they don't live in my country. The app is pretty neat though, the slider could be a bit bigger, because it appears at the bottom when you explore by touch and it's tiny, or there could be some distance, but that's a super awesome concept. Also when it checks for new posts, focus gets stuck on "There is nothing new, and check post button." Only happens if I click on the "Check for new posts" button, but that might be because Apple is Apple and I have an iPhone 13 pro. I don't know how much groceries ould cost there, never been to Poland, but it's a good pack of the stuff I smoke plus a little list of basic groceries here. :)
in reply to Winter blue tardis

mastodon - Link to source

Łukasz Rutkowski

Thanks, I didn’t know you could gift apps. For slider height, a workaround is to increase text size just for single app. It can be done in system settings, or if you have a text size option in Control Center, there is a toggle to apply it only for a single app.
The problem with focus is new to me. I’ll investigate what’s wrong. Usually, the app automatically refreshes when you return to it. Manual refresh shouldn’t be necessary unless you spend a long time without switching.
in reply to Łukasz Rutkowski

gotosocial - Link to source

Winter blue tardis

Also, the presentation of notifications is strange, you have user mentioned you, that's a button, then you have the text with the post, I don't think you need to have them separated like that, makes people swipe more, it usually is a template, where "user mentioned you, post text." all together, I have no idea what other people say, but I saw that before each post in notifications, there is a button that says what the notification is, those are usually associated with the notification as a whole, but it's a nice thing, only that when you go through a lot of them, it gets tiring. I think your touch target needs to be bigger for the slider, but if one were to use their phone in landscape, that won't be a big issue, only that, people tend to use phones in portrait. I really think how great of an app that would be for iPads.
in reply to Łukasz Rutkowski

gotosocial - Link to source

Winter blue tardis

Cool, it works, it kinda didn't make sense to me at first, LOL. I go to beginning and it kind of increased the posts remaining, which, neveo mind my brain is confused. LOL. I still have version 1.5, though, so unless you released it on the aqpstore, I won't see it. I'm using your app to write now. Also, what is quiet public supposed to mean? I thought it was unlisted, but confused, kind of. Masto makes no sense, it't one time unlisted, one time quiet public, go to social shows it as unlisted, but your privacy/visibility setting says quiet public. It's only public if you get followed, or someone deliberately visits your profile, but. I don't know, someone needs to make a clear terminology for privacy options, seriously. Haha.
in reply to Łukasz Rutkowski

gotosocial - Link to source

Winter blue tardis

you read chronologically in every app. But also go to social doesn’t use quiet public. Maybe I can just change the label for it. Also, it’s confusing to use quiet public because I don’t know it doesn’t make sense to me. I’m an old old user. And I have used Masto in my first few years, but then I switched. Maybe that’s why it doesn’t make sense to me. 
in reply to Winter blue tardis

gotosocial - Link to source

Winter blue tardis

Ooh, I have a cool idea, no idea what programming language you use for it, but you could maybe try adding templates, which users can edit, so they can add stuff like, visibility, source, and change around things. The settings screen should not bring you into the phone settings though, it should be in-app settings only, I haven't seen an app do that before, either. Especially if you include permissions for notifications and customisations for them. You can also try coding their look like the home timeline, so maybe the whole look is consistent, unless you did that in the update. We shall wait for this Bulgarian appstore version to decide to act. Haha. I probably overwhelmed you, sooo, I'll stop here. I'll probably buy the lifetime version. After all, I got paid. Grins! One more note, in EU I don't think we separate 4000 in 4 jjj. I think it's a one number together kind of thing, unless you do it differently over there, where it's also the EU. Haha, I just realised that.
in reply to Winter blue tardis

mastodon - Link to source

Łukasz Rutkowski

Hey sorry for the inconvenience. You have to go to notifications screen in the app and then from there go to push notifications option to enable them. It doesn’t appear in system settings because it only shows here after the app asks for permission first time.
Offering to enable push notifications directly after purchase sounds like a good option. I’ll plan on implementing it in future.

mastodon - Link to source
Langage inclusif, avis controversé

Sensitive content

#accessibilité

pleroma - Link to source

I've avoided making any kind of deep investment into "smart home" junk, but I will say that the number one thing I care about being able to control is the thermostat.

All these smart home devices with wifi and cloud control capabilities end up being abandoned after a few years which is ridiculous. Most don't have a local API.

So that leaves you with two options if you want to go down the route of local-only control: Zigbee and Z-Wave

Zigbee products are cheaper, but they're 2.4ghz and wifi-adjacent. See lots of complaints about it and its reliability.

Z-Wave products are much more expensive, but it's 900mhz and many devices automatically act as repeaters. Range is good, people say it's rock solid for years.

It appears that both Z-Wave and Zigbee dongles expose themselves as serial interfaces, so it should be pretty straightforward working with either one.

HomeAssistant is going hard into Z-Wave though -- they just released a new bridge for it

home-assistant.io/blog/2025/08…

previously they did Zigbee:

home-assistant.io/connectzbt1/

Either way I think it's probably much more future-proof than this Wifi based junk.


Z-Wave reborn - Home Assistant Connect ZWA-2

Announcing the ultimate way to connect Z-Wave devices to Home Assistant
Home Assistant
in reply to Les Orchard

mastodon - Link to source

Graydon Hoare

good christ the number of conversations I've had about jobs that go like

me: "you understand I'm 100% remote"
them: "yup"
me: "I won't move to your city"
them: "course"
me: "absolute deal breaker"
them: "it's cool bro"
me: "I cannot negotiate on this"
them: "we love remote"
me: "I will literally quit if this is a job requirement"
them: "remote-o-rama!"

...
hours later
...

them: "but 3 days/wk in-office, obvs"

mastodon - Link to source

Хочу поделиться особенными ощущениями от сегодняшнего дня. Знаете, бывает такое — берёшь и пишешь приложение не из пула, не по плану, а просто потому что захотелось отвлечься или посмотреть на какую-то новую крутую штуку в языке, которую увидел где-то и никак не мог опробовать в раьочих проектах. Коллега подкинул идею, и она мне показалось очень интересной.

И вот ты погружаешься в процесс, забываешь про всё на свете. Пишешь код, который приносит не только практическую пользу, но и удовольствие.

Закончил работу, посмотрел на то, что получилось, и понял — это было именно то, что нужно. Коллега доволен, а я получил заряд позитива на неделю вперёд.

Интересно, а у вас бывает такое? Когда вы пишете код не потому что надо, а потому что хочется? Как вы это объясняете? Может, это и есть настоящая любовь к своему делу? 🤔

Делитесь в комментариях своими историями!

mastodon - Link to source
A guy finds a lamp lying on the sidewalk. He picks it up and a Scottish genie pops out. The genie says, "thanks so much for lettin' me outa that wretched lamp, lad. For that I grant ya one wish . Just go home, state what it is ya wish for and it'll be granted. Just make sure ya say it loudly, would ya, 'cause I'm a bit deaf."
The next day, the man finds the genie, with two women trailing behind him. One woman says to the other woman, "You're conflating general and special relativity again, Amy. Special relativity deals with inertial frames,no acceleration. Once you introduce gravity or acceleration, you need the tensor calculus of general relativity. The Lorentz transformations alone can't account for gravitational time dilation. That's why GPS satellites require corrections from both theories. Their onboard clocks tick faster due to weaker gravity, but slower due to their orbital velocity. You can't dismiss the Schwarzschild metric just because it complicates your neat Minkowski
spacetime."
The other woman replied, "Margaret, I m not dismissing general relativity. I m questioning its completeness. The Einstein field equations are elegant, yes, but they're classical. They don't incorporate quantum mechanics."
The man shouted at the genie, "This has nothing to do with what I asked you for."
The genie hung his head and said, "Sorry about that, lad. I thought ya said ya wanted a pair of smart .. lasses."

reshared this

mastodon - Link to source

I've seen lots of solar water heaters on roofs in #Greece, but very few #photovoltaic panels. The country must have many more sunny days than we do. Why is that? Is it because the price of the electricity from the grid is too low or because there is a lack of incentives from the government?

#renewables #renewableenergy #greenpower

#greece #renewables #renewableenergy #photovoltaic #greenpower
in reply to sotiry

mastodon - Link to source

Jiří Eischmann

@sotiry big solar power plants are definitely more cost efficient, but in Czechia home solar systems have two advantages: the government subsidized them up to 50% of their costs and consumers have to pay a distribution fee for every kWh they consume from the grid and the fee can be as high as 50% of the total price. So home solar systems can still be cheaper for people than consuming power from big solar plants, but using the grid. But if subsidies in Greece aren't big enough and the distribution fees are different, then the calculation can also be dramatically different.
@sotiry

mastodon - Link to source
From the awesome explanation and examples in @SaraSoueidan’s CSS scroll-spy post — sarasoueidan.com/blog/css-scro… — I learned what that kind of thing is called and how it works (ideally and accessibly) and was able today to build a production Alpine version to solve an open ticket for the project I’m working on. 👏

CSS-only scrollspy effect using scroll-marker-group and :target-current

— The personal website of Sara Soueidan, inclusive Web UI engineer
www.sarasoueidan.com
@Sara Soueidan
in reply to mhoye

mastodon - Link to source

mhoye

Google's sideloading thing, passkeys, age verification, they're all basically the same shape; anchoring a fixed identity to a computing act "for safety".

There are millions of safety features in the world meant to protect people from themselves; my personal favorites, as metaphors go, are the standard three-point interlocks industrial paper cuttes and the cages on big Hobart mixers.

Inexperienced, distracted, even inebriated it's basically impossible to hurt yourself with these accidentally.

An industrial paper cutter.
A Hobart spiral mixer.
This entry was edited (2 months ago)
in reply to mhoye

mastodon - Link to source

mhoye

But: Software isn't just a machine, though; it's an idea and an ideology that happens to also be a machine.

That paper cutter won't stop working if whatever's printed on the paper you're cutting is inconvenient for the authorities.

That Hobart mixer's safety cage doesn't prevent you from making bread to feed people in line at the soup kitchen, or in line to vote.

Software has intention and those intentions can be arbitrarily changed, and they are. All the time.

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

mastodon - Link to source

Je v pořádku sprchovat se jen jednou týdně jako Tommy Lee? Pro pokožku je to lepší, tvrdí odborníci

A čo vy? Ako často sa sprchujete?
#zdravie
prozeny.cz/clanek/chcete-mit-z…


Je v pořádku sprchovat se jen jednou týdně jako Tommy Lee? Pro pokožku je to lepší, tvrdí odborníci

Jak často se sprchovat? Podle odborníků rozhodně ne denně, naopak ideálnímu stavu je blíž hudebník Tommy Lee, který míří pod sprchu jednou týdně.
Veronika Lichnovská (Proženy.cz)
#zdravie

akkoma - Link to source

PSA
Do not send DMs or texts like this:

❎ “Hi, you here? Need help with something…”

  • Wastes their time
  • Causes anxiety to recipient
  • Difficult to have an asynchronous conversation
  • Likely to be left on read

Instead, send DMs like this:

✅ “Hi, I need your help tonight, do you have a shovel and gas in your car? (body burial)”

  • Concise, but actionable
  • Respects your recipient’s time
  • Spurs conversation with a clear topic
  • Gives recipient more time to help you
This entry was edited (2 months ago)

mastodon - Link to source

The slides from my first talk from earlier today at #OSSummit can be found below. Building a SolarPunk Web: Open Source for a Sustainable Digital Future

#SolarPunk #OpenSource #ClimateTech #WebSustainability #SustyWeb

docs.google.com/presentation/d…


Building a Solarpunk Web: Open Source for a Sustainable Digital Future

Building a SolarPunk Web Open Source for a Sustainable Digital Future Mike Gifford, Open Source Summit Europe 2025 August 27, 2025 2:10-2:50pm CEST D202 (Elicium Level 2) Building a Solarpunk Web: Open Source for a Sustainable Digital Future - Mike G…
Google Docs
#opensource #solarpunk #OSSummit #sustyweb #WebSustainability #climatetech
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